Find your way home - Adoptions Decrease Again
Fewer children and adolescents found new parents in Thuringia in 2023 than in the previous year. 47 girls and 42 boys were adopted last year, according to the state statistics office, six fewer than in 2022.
About half of the children and adolescents adopted in 2023 were younger than three, eleven were between 12 and 18 years old. In about half of the adoptions, the new parents were not related to the children - most of these children were younger than six. Older children up to 18 years were mainly adopted by relatives or a stepparent.
At the end of 2023, 27 children and adolescents were still waiting to be adopted, compared to 18 the previous year. There was no shortage of applications for adoption. With 131 applications, there were about five potential adoptive parents for each child at the end of last year. In the previous year, there were about seven potential adoptive parents per child, according to the statistics.
Various reasons could be why, despite the apparent surplus of potential adoptive parents, some children are left without a family, according to the state association of foster and adoptive parents. One possible explanation is that the children have various problems, and not all potential parents feel capable of taking on the particularly challenging task of raising these children.
The decrease in adoptions led to an increase in the number of children still waiting, with 27 in 2023 compared to 18 the previous year. Despite the high number of adoption applications, older children typically found new families through relatives or a stepparent.
